Sunday, June 16, 2013

Jesus, Adopted by God as His Only Son [#JesusFollowers]

On this Father’s Day, we celebrate our fathers and those who
have been fathers to us, influencing our lives and making us the people we are
today.

As followers of Jesus, we look to him as a father figure,
but also as a brother – a fellow member of the Human Race who also looked to
his father and those who were father figures in his life.

Jesus was adopted. But Joseph, the husband of Mary, wasn't
the one who adopted him, as we have all been taught. The adoptive father of
Jesus was none other than God, the Creator of the Universe.

Jesus was chosen by God (Matt. 12:18; Luke 9:35; 23:35) anointed
by God (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38) and sent by God (Mark 9:37; Matt. 9:38; Luke
9:48; John 5:37). At his baptism, God’s voice says, "This day, I have
begotten you," thus becoming his father by adoption. In early manuscripts
of the Gospels, Joseph is clearly spoken of as the father and Mary as the
mother of Jesus. In Luke 2:48, Mary says to Jesus, "Your father and I have
been looking for you."

In Matthew (13:55) he is easily recognized by others as fully
human and part of a human family, saying, “Is not this the carpenter's son? Is
not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon
and Judas?

Joseph was by all accounts a good father to Jesus, taking
him to Jerusalem every year, performing everything according to the Law, and it
is said that Jesus “grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor
of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:39-41; 52)

The early church spoke of Jesus as a man, chosen by God. In
Peter’s sermons in Acts, he speaks of him as, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man
attested to you by God (Acts 2:22) and “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the
Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good.” (Acts 13:38.) Jesus is
spoken of as a man’s offspring, the direct descendant of David (Acts. 13:23)
and according to the Genealogy provided in the Gospels, this must be through
his father, Joseph.

Thus, the early church that gathered in Jerusalem after the death of Jesus and
his return to God in the resurrection, saw Jesus as a man, chosen by God, sent
by God and adopted by God at his baptism to proclaim a Good and Beneficial Message
to mankind, the Gospel, calling on all to repent. It could be no other way,
since the Jewish Jesus Followers of that age (before the destruction of
Jerusalem) continued to attend the Temple there every day.

WHY IT MATTERS

If we believe this, what does it mean to us? What difference
does it REALLY make if Jesus was adopted by God or was instead created by the
seed of God Himself – an otherworldly being who was only adopted and raised by
Joseph?

Jesus’ full humanity is vital to our ability to obey Jesus.
Jesus tells us we must obey God and following the example of Jesus as a perfect
role model of that behavior.

The Adoption of Jesus by God preserved the humanity of
Jesus, allowing us to rely on his example and see through him a “Clear Glass”
what God wishes for us all.

If Jesus is divine, fully or even partially, the example of
Jesus that he set for us meaningless as goals, because we cannot hope to
accomplish them. They make his message and commands meaningless, too, and turns
him into a mocker or a false prophet, urging us to do what cannot possibly be
done – to be exactly like a half-man/half-God, a demigod, who was endowed in a
way we are not.

The church of Christendom today (specifically Protestant
Christendom) believes exactly this: that we cannot be like Jesus, the Demigod, so
we should not even try to do the Good Works that he commanded. We can, they
say, only believe “on” him in order to gain his goodness and righteousness magically,
by our mere words and beliefs, and that full obedience of Jesus’ commands is literally
impossible.

But this makes not only Joseph, but Jesus, into an
irrelevancy. It makes obedience impossible. It makes the words of Jesus into a
mockery, and we know that Jesus himself said that his words would “not pass
away” even as the Jewish world around his followers would.

Today, we must look to Jesus as the son of a human
father – a man adopted by God to be the specially anointed Prophet who brings
us a message that liberates us and elevates us, telling us that we MAY and MUST
obey God and become righteous in our deeds, not just in our intentions and mere
words, always relying humbly on God for strength to become more like His
adopted Son, Jesus. That is the message of the Gospel, pure and simple.